India's Premier Manmohan Singh called malnutrition in the country "a national shame" on Tuesday as he released a major survey

that found 42 percent of children under five were underweight

an alliance of nongovernment organisations were both "worrying and encouraging" for India -- a fast-growing country of 1.2 billion people with the highest number of children worldwide.

The research found the proportion of under-fives who are underweight had declined 11 percentage points in seven years, but Singh said it remained "unacceptably high" at 42 percent.

Rohini Mukherjee, from the Naadi Foundation, one of NGOs that produced the report, said the wealth created in a country estimated to have 57 billionaires last year had not trickled down fast enough to the impoverished masses

prevalence of malnutrition, India is "doing worse than sub-Saharan Africa,"